45 Years After RFK Assassination, Story Of Doctor Who Rushed To His Aid
STUDIO CITY (CBSLA.com) — Forty-five years after the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy in Los Angeles, one reporter found documentation of how her father tended to the fallen Senator.
CBS News correspondent Michelle Miller's father, Dr. Ross Miller, was a delegate from Compton in the audience the night that Kennedy was gunned down in the pantry of the Ambassador Hotel.
Dr. Miller was sitting in the audience with his wife when a call went out for a doctor's assistance. When he arrived at the scene, Dr. Miller saw five people laying on the ground.
"He rushed, and it took some time to get back there," said Miller. "People didn't believe he was actually a doctor; he was an African American man."
Miller remembers her father telling her about a Life Magazine photograph of Robert Kennedy. The caption referenced her father, but he was not pictured.
"The doctor that they talked about -- Dr. Ross Miller -- could not be seen in this picture," said Miller.
When she decided to dig deeper, Miller found the actual report from the FBI investigation into the Robert F. Kennedy assassination.
In the report, Dr. Miller is listed as the physician in attendance on Robert Kennedy after the shooting. He traveled by ambulance with another gunshot victim to the hospital, according to the FBI records.
"The two CBS News reporters said 'we'll give you a ride back to your car at the hotel, but you have to give us an interview,'" she said.
Miller found the six-minute interview, referred to in the FBI investigation, in the CBS archive.
In the interview Dr. Miller answers questions about tending to Kennedy.
"I knew he was an excellent surgeon. But to see him in a crisis act with such precision," said Miller. "It just sent goose pimples through me."
"I'm proud, I'm proud of my dad," she said.
Wednesday marks the 45-year anniversary of the night Robert F. Kennedy was shot.
